I followed this link retweeted by Frederick Hess, contributor to Education Week, to a US News & World Report opinion piece titled More Money, Same Problems. It was written by Gerard Robinson (the source of the tweet) and Benjamin Scafidi. Robinson is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, “a conservative think tank” (Source: Wikipedia). Scafidi is a professor of economics at Kennesaw State University.

The authors acknowledge that “public education is important to the economic and social well-being of our nation”. They go on to point out that there are some students who are successful in public education and far too many who are not. You have no argument from me. Robinson and Scafidi also concede that an adequate level of “resources matter to education”.

Their commentary then gets into the the problems that they believe plague public education:

– While student school enrollment increased 96% since 1950, public school staffing increased 386%.
– Since 1992, public school national math scores have shown little growth (click to their source).
– Today’s graduation rates are only slightly above what they were in 1970.

Robinson and Scafidi follow up with their ideas for improving student outcomes in public education:

– Better involvement from parents
– State control of failing public schools
– Charter schools (a result of state takeovers)

While I appreciate their passion for providing a better experience for students who do not have access to a high quality public education, I take issue with their ideas for improvement.

First, parent involvement. While it can have an impact on student learning when the involvement is positive, it is often not something we as public educators can control in our settings. My experience tells me that the best public schools focus the majority of their efforts and resources on the limited time that they actually have with students. Dr. John Hattie’s research on what works regarding instruction places family involvement on the lower end of the effective educational approach spectrum. It can be effective, but there is a ceiling.

So what’s on the higher end of the spectrum? Everything that Robinson and Scafidi failed to mention, including:

In fact, one of the least effective practices for improving student learning outcomes are…charter schools. According to Hattie, charter schools have around the same effect size as ensuring students had appropriate amounts of sleep and altering classroom/school schedules. My time is important, so I will let charter school and school choice proponents wrestle with these findings.

What I do want to point out is that the most effective instructional strategies require generous amounts of school funding. Here’s why: Teaching is one of the most challenging professions. To do it well, educators need consistent and effective training in the areas of curriculum, assessment and instructional strategies. This requires funding and support for job-embedded professional development. Dollars should be allocated for training, time, resources, and opportunities to apply these new skills in a low risk/high success environment. If this sounds like a lot of money for this type of work, please remember that teaching is a profession. I am sure you would agree that our students are worth it.

Citing graduation rates and flatlining test scores might serve to perpetuate the opinion that public education is broken. However, this argument is a generalization of our system as a whole. Yes, there are ineffective schools and there are effective schools. No one would dispute this. Yet each school is an individual learning community. They each have specific strengths and needs, and should be assessed with valid and reliable measures. To paint a broad stroke over public education with data that is questionable at best (see here and here) is a disservice to the hard work and dedication that all public educators put in every day on behalf of our students.

I won’t argue that public education needs to improve. We do. It is the work that we should be engaging in every day. The least that people outside public education can do is to ensure that they consider multiple perspectives on a position they support and provide valid and reliable evidence to back it up.